WHEN I WAKE UP, I AM IN THE FRONT SEAT OF THE pickup, held upright by a very tight seat belt.
Juneau stares intently ahead as she drives, and the gold of the starburst in her right eye flashes in the desert sun. Her finger-length hair is dusted with dirt, and stands up on end. Reddish clay caked on her arms has dried into a crinkled pattern. Right now she would fit perfectly into the postapocalyptic world she believed existed until a few weeks ago. Like Mad Max’s extremely dirty sidekick.
I look down and see that I am shirtless, dressed only in my blood-spattered jeans and tennis shoes. I assume my shirt is too blood drenched to ever use again. I focus on my Converses and try to wiggle my feet. No go.
“Where are we?” I ask, and Juneau jumps. My voice sounds like gravel, and I clear my throat and ask again.
“We’ve been driving parallel to the Colorado River, and are about to cross over it into Arizona.”
We pass a sign that says NEEDLES FWY and then onto a bridge crossing high over a wide aqua-green river. “How did I get in the car?” I ask.
“I got the motorcycle ramp unstuck and used the winch to pull you in,” she says, keeping her eyes on the road.
I watch as she expertly handles a pickup truck after teaching herself to drive barely a week ago. “Is there anything you can’t do?” I ask, only halfway joking.
She considers. “There are plenty of things I’ve never done. Fly a plane. Speak Chinese. But nothing I can think of that I couldn’t either learn or find a way around.”
“Like lifting a hundred-seventy-five-pound man into the front seat of a truck,” I say.
“For example.” She glances over and smiles before focusing back on the road.
Just. Wow. This girl is so confident. Capable. Self-reliant. And generally kick-ass. I wonder what she could ever see in me. “Maybe, once I’m unparalyzed, I could impress you with my mad video game skills,” I offer.
She laughs. “You’ve got to be good at something besides that.”
“What,” I ask, “besides dazzling chicks with my keen wit and striking good looks?” And I give her the smile that I used to use to charm people, which now seems more than a little ridiculous. Juneau rolls her eyes and I laugh. “Okay . . . skills . . . I can lift one eyebrow, put my entire fist in my mouth, and say ‘cheers’ in twenty-three languages.”
Juneau looks over at me in disbelief and then bursts out laughing.
“Okay . . . if I have to toot my own horn, I used to be really good at lacrosse. In fact, I was the junior varsity captain.” I clarify: “That means head of the team.”
“Lacrosse was in the EB,” she says, and digs into her literally encyclopedic memory. “Competitive sport, modern version of the North American Indian game of baggataway, in which two teams of players use long-handled, racket-like implements (crosses) to catch, carry, or throw a ball down the field or into the opponents’ goal.”
“Do you have a photographic memory?” I can’t help but ask.
“No. As I said, we didn’t have much to read,” she responds. “And the Encyclopaedia Britannica was our only window on the world.”
She glances down to check the atlas sitting open on the seat between us. Clicking on the turn signal, she pulls off the bridge and into a picnic area on the edge of the river. A couple of cars are parked nearby, and out in the water a speedboat pulls some shouting kids on an inner tube.
Juneau rolls down the windows, cuts the motor, and turns toward me.
“You played lacrosse. So you must have good reflexes. And if you were captain you must have leadership skills.”
“The operative word here is ‘were.’ I kind of lost the taste for lacrosse when Mom’s mental health started getting patchy. Kind of lost the taste for everything else, too.”
I turn away from the pity in Juneau’s eyes and lean my head back against the seat. I remember the abyss that opened up inside me after Mom left. The things I enjoyed before—my interests, my passions, everything else that I loved—were sucked right down into it. It was easier to feel nothing. The only activities that interested me were the ones that helped me forget the pain. Temporarily, of course. It always came back with a vengeance.
I wonder where the pain is now, and poke around inside myself like I’m hunting out a bruise. It’s still there, but it seems smaller. More manageable. I wonder if that’s because of Juneau. Or because, for once, I feel like I have a purpose. Or maybe it has something to do with the dream.
“What are you thinking of?” Juneau asks.
I start to say something funny—comedy being my favorite defense mechanism—but decide I don’t need to do that with her. Not anymore. “I’m remembering . . . thinking about Mom. What it was like when she was sick, and then when she left,” I respond truthfully.
“Want to talk about it?” she offers.